It wasn’t a good night for sleeping. The bed was made of pillows, and the Sloans spun around a lightless antique shop. He couldn’t make out what they said. Finally, he slept on the floor.
Breakfast was Continental, croissants and coffee. He had that to be thankful for. The cook made his pot double strength, and he poured a stream of sugar into it. It was before eight, and only he and the staff were up. When he was finished, he went out into the garden.
Sloan’s taste for things Virginian showed in the landscaping. No native evergreens were allowed to intrude, and the few maples were barely tolerated. The garden with the marble bathers was divided from the rose garden by a trellis. There was a second trellis halfway down the side of the lawn serving as camouflage for a potting shed. He wandered down to it and found nothing more suspicious than varmint poison. Rather than come back through the yard he crossed to the Sloan driveway. A yellow Buick station wagon was parked in it. He followed the driveway to the front of the house. On the west end were two rooms he had not yet seen, an office and a workroom with neat rows of paint cans and, hung on hooks from the walls, legs and arms salvaged from discarded possessions.
‘Looking for something?’
Hillary came around from the gardens. She was in a green one-piece riding outfit with jodhpur wings and high boots. Her hands were on her hips. The effect of the green and her white-gold hair was what she wanted it to be.
‘Yes, you,’ Roman said. ‘The house is lovely, but I was hoping for some company. Maybe I’m just an early riser.’
‘Maybe,’ Hillary said, but didn’t bother keeping up the tension. ‘I can’t say that I like it. We used to have a house in Cambridge. When my mother died, we sold it. The neighborhood was changing, Father said. We bought this. I still don’t like it.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Twelve years. Before I forget, he sent me to fetch you. He’s at the breakfast table.’
Hoddinot Sloan appeared to have recovered from last night’s dinner. He dabbed half a croissant with marmalade as he welcomed Roman.
‘Sleep well? That’s a pencil post four-poster in your room, you know.’
‘I’m sure he does,’ Hillary commented. She poured twin braids of milk and coffee into her cup.
‘Which is more than I can say for you.’ Her father went on. ‘I’ve tried to interest Hillary in the study of antiques for years. All she can think of is horses and hippies, a fairly individual combination but not one likely to stimulate the brain.’
Far away at the rear of the lawn a gardener laid out sprinklers. When they stretched from one fence to the other, he bent down to a water nozzle hidden in the grass and turned it on. A series of rooster tails erupted from the grass. The works, Roman thought, had also been turned on beneath Sloan’s own manicured exterior. Last night’s dinner had not been a normal one; he wasn’t a man to invite an audience to his own execution.
‘Father disapproves,’ she said. She crossed her arms, drawing the knit riding suit tight around her chest. Sloan still didn’t know how to handle the outlined maturity of her body. Sex, as usual, was the ultimate weapon. ‘Do you jump?’ she asked Roman.
‘Occasionally. On hot sand, things of that sort.’
‘No, no, jump horses. That’s Hillary’s hobby,’ Sloan said.
Hillary giggled. ‘I thought it was quite funny.’ She began laughing again. The happier she was, the younger she looked.
‘Ridiculous,’ Sloan said. The last shred of croissant vanished into his mouth. ‘Come on, Grey. We have a lot of work to do.’
While Hillary went down a path to the stables, Sloan escorted Roman into his private office. Sloan had chosen second-rate antiques for the room, good enough to lend a pleasant air but nothing whose value would be ruined by wear.
‘Very wise,’ Roman said. ‘A lot of people would have just put these into storage.’
Sloan pointed to the files. ‘I never waste anything. I got these at a dollar apiece. Simply replaced the runners and cemented strips on the drawers, and they’re good as new. I’ve been offered a hundred apiece for them now. Tell me, how do you plan to categorize the collection?’
Roman explained that he intended no comprehensive catalogue, just a detailed list of those pieces that were of exhibition value. Sloan volunteered that he had photos of every piece that went through his hands with records of any restoration that had been done to them.
‘It’s a matter of protection,’ he added. ‘I don’t want anyone accusing me of bad faith. I tell them exactly what they’re buying. I may not tell people what they have when they’re selling to me; that’s part of the game. Otherwise, they shouldn’t be in it.’
Roman nodded obediently, and Sloan went on.
‘I’ll tell you this, no one can accuse me of shady practices like so many New York collectors.’
‘Are there many people like, uh, that in Boston?’
Sloan sniffed. ‘Mostly Irish here. I thought it was a good time to leave the city when the Kennedys bought it.’
Sloan’s bigotry rose like a whale through the calm surface of a sea. It blew off its supply of bile and in a few moments returned to the depths of his personality. The conversation moved back to antiques.
‘It must have made you very sad when your Armory shipment was destroyed. Perhaps it wasn’t total,’ Roman suggested. ‘If you could restore the files and you have photos, you might be able to restore some of those pieces.’
Sloan shrugged the suggestion off. ‘I doubt it. Besides – you’ll find this hard to believe – they’re being held as evidence or something by the New York police. Some murder or a body, I haven’t got it straight.’
Roman raised his eyebrows with wonder.
‘It is presumptuous, I agree,’ Sloan said. ‘But apparently the man who ran into the van was hiding a dead girl in his car. If it hadn’t been for the accident, he probably would have gotten away with the crime.’
‘Didn’t the police tell you anything more?’
‘No.’ Sloan sighed. ‘An affair of passion most likely. That’s what these cases usually are. Emotional things.’
Sloan opened his desk and took out four loose-leaf folders. The pages were full of notes and snapshots. He gave them to Roman to carry as they moved to his workshop. A sharp blend of turpentine and sawdust permeated the room. Dowels of varying thicknesses stood in an ascending line like the pipes of an organ. A large rotary saw stood on one side. On the walls were the dismantled trophies Roman had seen through the window: cabriole and reeded legs with hall-and-claw, hair paw, pad and spade feet. A bright fluorescent light in the shape of a halo hung from the ceiling.
Roman put the notebooks down and took out his own notebook and pen. Sloan dragged a dropcloth off a small serving table. It was New England Sheraton rather than Philadelphian, from about 1800. At any auction it would draw a very good price and Roman had to admit it was museum class.
‘I purchased this for, let’s say five thousand. I’ll sell it for much more,’ Sloan told him. ‘Can you tell me how I was able to buy it for so little? Also, can you tell me where you have seen work by the same artist here?’
Sloan was insatiable. A mania for tests was in the best of gaja, and it was something that Roman could never comprehend, an ‘it’s how you perform today that counts’ attitude that explained their frustration with sex. Served them right. Roman ran his hand along the fine carving of the legs and the glossy mahogany of the drawer fronts. He didn’t have the patience to keep Sloan in suspense.
‘Samuel McIntire did the carving, and you can see the design is basically the same as the mantel in your living room. I admired it the first day I was here. That puts us in Salem. McIntire didn’t do the lid on this top, however; that’s the trademark of William Hood. They collaborated on this piece. How did you get the bargain?’
He opened the drawers. Except for lathing on the bottom of the sides to correct a droop, they were the originals.
‘The back. The back was broken in,’ Roman said.
Sloan’s mouth dropped as far as it decently could.
‘How did you know that? You haven’t even pulled that table away from the wall to see the back.’
If it had been yesterday when he needed to impress Sloan, Roman would have answered with some dramatics. Today he was a bored magician.
‘I’m afraid that’s all it could have been. Obviously everything else is in perfect condition. Besides, a few of the old traditions persisted in Salem into the nineteenth century. The witchcraft trials, you know, and some of the old fears. It wasn’t rare for a descendant of one of the accused ladies to have his house and all his furniture broken in some way after he died. It was supposed to ruin any hiding place that his spirit might try to reside in. Being thrifty New Englanders, they usually chose to do the damage someplace where it wouldn’t show. They must have been a strange people.’
‘Indeed,’ Sloan agreed. He pulled the table out. A new pine panel covered the back. ‘To think that a ghost would hide away in a table.’
‘A highboy would be more comfortable, wouldn’t it?’
Confusion clouded Sloan’s face and then passed.
‘Oh, yes. I see what you mean. Much more comfortable.’ He laughed. ‘Anyway, as you no doubt suspect, I’ll stain the pine to match the rest of the table.’
‘You’ll use handwrought nails.’
‘Naturally. Look, they’re in. Tight as a coffin.’
The serving table filled the first page of Roman’s notebook. There were others to come from Sloan’s collection, and both men had worked up an appetite by lunchtime.